apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I say embrace the low ceiling -you'll never be able to hide it. Frank Lloyd Wright utilized low-slung buildings and low ceilings throughout his homes - head to your local library and check out some books of his to see how he dealt with this, or online of course. Not sure if this is too traditional but a lot of 'old english' type interiors have low ceilings as well and they're really cozy. Good luck!

along the lines of dark floors and a white celler to help "stretch" the room; hang window treatments that reach from ceiling to floor. I'm always amazed how something that simple really does make the ceilings appear higher.

low ceilinged person, i recall some very cool tricks-of-the-eye designers doing unusually low chair rail/molding/paint technique in rooms, and it made the space look incredible...one in particular, i think, was on a top design episode...i dunno.

but i agree on table lamps, relatively normal sized furniture (not BIG pieces, but also not SMALL pieces), and a shiny dark floor (and walls, too)! the shiny floor will reflect tons of light, making the space seem a thousand times brighter and bigger. why not a shiny ceiling, too? if it's a smooth surface, with no bumps/beams/bulges, a high gloss would look cool.

I disagree with a dark floor. I was faced with the EXACT same problem, low ceiling. Tall people have to avoid my ceiling fan. I went with a light green rug and it makes the room look larger, as I felt a dark floor would make the room feel odd or reflect dark colors on my walls and therefore show off the flaw that the walls are not that tall. I am going with low retro furniture in order to avoid feeling claustrophobic, and set a limit to height, nothing in the room higher than 45" unless its a bookcase.

i think the best way to deal is with scale.. play with proportion, and dont be afraid to use larger, taller pieces against say a low-slung couch for contrast. i like the idea of a reflective ceiling if you can pull that off-- overall cool space though... have fun with the mauve carpeting! :)

I would put a semi gloss paint on the ceiling. Semi somewhat reflects light but isn't a mirror finish and will trick the eye to thinking subtle reflections are farther away than your ceiling is tall. I did it in my 8 foot ceilinged condo and visitors who live in the building have asked whether I had the ceiling raised into crawlspace above.

I grew up in a converted basement with even lower ceilings. I actually quite liked it! It was easy to keep cool or warm, and it always felt nice and cozy. I think the key is to surround yourself in colors/furnishings that are soothing and comfortable. It will make you feel like you are living inside of a cozy little coccoon.

the trick to making a ceiling higher is to keep the floor and ceiling similar in tone, I wouldn't go for a dark ceiling so therefore a light floor would help,I agree with the semi gloss finish on the ceiling-the other problem is that the room is very long so don't go with too strong a color on the side (longest) walls...however one or two accent walls painted with (subtle) vertical stripes will trick the eye into making the space taller( try the D room wall next to the little kitchen half wall!!Keep window treatments vertical as well, not horizontal blinds,ie drapery panels hung from ceiling to floor( more strong verticals) Subtly break up the large floorspace with area rugs, to create smaller 'areas' that feel more proportionate to a lower ceiling( or shorter wall)

Ditch the ceiling fan.

Darken the floor covering.

Run window treatments (vertical stripes if possible) all the way up to the ceiling, even foregoing the visible rods if possible.

Keep furniture low and with a constant horizontal height, BUT, have at least one or two pieces that are exagerrated verticals... a tall armoire, two TALL-backed chairs. Make those pieces the darkest or brightest pieces you've got. Make sure you have one of these exagerrated elements in every direction you face.

Paint your ceiling pale sky blue.

Use tall standing floor mirrors.

Paint tone-on-tone vertical bands of color on the walls.

Use free-standing tall architectural elements like columns.

Paint the far, far wall, door and the front of the island all one VERY dark color. It will push the side walls out, visually.

I know this one! *waves hand*

Put up thick, simple crown molding with a picture rail another 6" below the edge of the crown molding. Paint the picture rail, the space on the wall between the rail and the crown molding, and the crown molding white, along with the ceiling. Paint the walls another color.

I did this to an 8' ceiling, and I can't tell you the number of people who walked it and looked around, puzzled, and said, "I didn't know you had an extra-high ceiling in here." This includes a guy who was 6'4"--he swore that the ceiling was at least 9'. I had to stop the realtor from listing the ceilings as "raised."

You should start your window dressings JUST below the edge of the picture rail and extend them to the ground for a strong vertical line. I'm not normally a fan of curtains, but in this case, they'd help a lot.

A darker floor would help, but I'd be very tempted to go with something with lateral movement across the short side, like wood or laminate.

Wood trim in the right place can do amazing things. While restoring a place with 8'3" ceilings, I bought baseboards for cheap, salvage from a mansion library. I turned them upside down and attached them to the walls abutting the trim at the ceilings, to create a 5" drop.

At one point, I was standing where I could see into a room we had done and one we hadn't. I thought the ceiling in the undone room was considerably lower than the other, and I had missed that detail up to now.

HAHA The trim trick had visually tricked ME. The trim appeared to have added 6" to 8" to the height of the ceiling in the finished room. I was shocked at the difference it made. I was going for a faux trey ceiling effect, with the expectation that it would make the ceilings appear higher, but I never imagined it could it make the ceilings look almost 10% higher.

NOTE: The trim and ceiling were white, and the walls were not.

I once saw someone extend their wall paint ~5" into the celing. The walls were a beautiful light green and the celing was white. It made the room feel taller and gave an illusion of crown molding

I second the reference to Frank Lloyd Wright's work.

A couple of mentions here of doing a stringcourse/datum line around the room, which is a really good idea and a technique Wright used about a few hundred times. Whether you apply trim or simply do it with paint, create that consistent horizontal band all the way around the room, perhaps right at the tops of the doors or several inches below. So perhaps at 72 or 80 inches.

Paint the walls some darker color right up to that line, and pull the lighter ceiling color down to that line. By pulling the ceiling color down to that horizontal line, you'd be obscuring the point of transition between ceiling and wall planes, and thus visually obscuring where exactly the tops of the walls stop, allowing them to seem taller.

I would NOT apply any sort of crown molding, as such a treatment would only serve to emphasize how short the walls are.

If this horizontal band were to come far enough down, then I'd also align the window treatments with it. Have the tops of the curtains or blinds align exactly with the datum line, or incorporate some sort of color band/design that ties into it.

Another trick I'd seriously consider borrowing from Wright is to place a decorative band all around the ceiling roughly 18 inches in from the walls. Wright might have used flat strips of wood trim, and you might tack up some painted wood or simply paint a band around the room. You might fill the area of the ceiling inside this band in with a darker color, but outside the band and down to the datum line on the walls should definitely be a lighter color.

This ceiling band would work in conjunction with the horizontal datum line on the walls to further obscure the exact transition between wall and ceiling planes. The eye would travel more freely between wall and ceiling, with the walls sort of stealing visual territory from the ceiling, and vice versa.

You're right to consider low furniture. Since you're on a budget, you might look at pieces from the 50's and 60's--so much of the modernist furniture from this era, in the vein of Knoll and Herman Miller, tended to be very low-slung and horizontal. You might pick up a great 60's sectional for next to nothing in the classified ads, which could be perfect for this space.

Stick with mostly table lamps, and look for some lamps that are decidedly horizontal in proportion.

REY-I have a question. When you post hang the draperies JUST below the trim, does that mean abutting the trim, or say a 2"-4" gap. Should the wall be visible between?

Here are links to a couple of pictures of interiors that illustrate some ideas you might crib, or ways you might start thinking about developing this space:

www.usc.edu/dept/architecture/slide/ghirardo/CD3/021-CD3.jpg

www.naturalhomeplans.com/images/features/susanka_showhouse/kitchen.jpg

www.gainsboroughgalleries.com/images/gallery2.jpg

www.northfieldconstruction.net/Circle%20Lake,%205.jpg

Difficulties aside, it looks like a neat apartment.

I'd put them right flush up against the edge of the trim. Put the curtain rods as high as you can without hitting the picture rail.

>I would NOT apply any sort of crown molding, as such a treatment would only serve to emphasize how short the walls are.

Have you done it? I have. Guess what? It works. Like I said, it convinces tall guys and real estate agents, too. My contractor was amazed when he came back and saw it. He thought the room must have had high ceilings that he'd somehow forgotten about and was actually trying to figure out how it was possible with the floor above when I told him it was just a trick.

The key is to paint picture rail and up *all the same color* and the bit below another color. People's eyes tell them that the color change must indicate the start of the ceiling or "extra height".

It was more effective than I'd hoped. I was hoping for an apparent raise of 6". I got an apparent raise of more than a foot.

A friend of mine bought a condo with the same problem in the living room, and after going into another condo with the same floor plan as theirs, realized that there were raised parts in the ceiling that someone had drywalled over to make it all even (therefore - lower). He smashed the whole ceiling to pieces and started over. It was a big job but he was a handy guy and didn't mind it.

Rey:

The difference in perception between your 8' ceilings and Sasha's 7'-3" ceilings is titanic.

Unless one deliberately wants emphasize how low this room is, perhaps in some Cotwold, Beatrix Potter, cutesy cottage kind of way, it would be wise to eschew traditional crown moldings.

Additionally, with ceilings at 75", there's hardly even going to be enough room for a standard crown profile above whatever door and window jambs exist in this space.

ha ha ha. I've never had that trouble at my place our ceilings at 9ft to keep the place cool and airy. BUT if you can afford to do something spectacular or you artistic you could do a ceiling mural looking up through buildings to the sky or... through trees? to give the illusion of no roof at all. Might not work but i'd like to see it. LOL!

You should invite people to a Toulouse Lautrec party, go to Home Depot or the gardening store and get a bunch of the strap-on kneepads people use for doing tasks on their knees, and issue them to all guests. UncaDon would approve!

If they're standard, they'll be at 6'8", right? I guess that only gives you four inches to play with after 3" trim. In that case, I'd skip the crown molding, but I'd *still* use the picture rail and make that a strong line to follow with white paint above. I'm sure it'd work still. I'm not saying that it'll be a convincing 9' ceiling. *g* The best you can hope for is probably a Is-this-a-little-low? feel. I bet you can make it feel like 7'8", at least, possibly 7'10".

The trick *stops* working nearly so well once the line gets around tall-person eye level. It'd probably still work if you put up regular crown molding and worked the picture rail around the window and door frames as long as it stayed about 6'4" or so, but it's most effective above the door level.

Too many lateral lines on furniture actually end up making everything feel heavy and low, so although mostly low furniture will help, if EVERYTHING is low, it'll feel like the ceiling is squishing it. (Also been there, done that.)

BTW, my bowling alley was 29' long, 12' wide, and 8' high. I got it to feel much less long and narrow and much, much higher.

I think a mural, being so close to your face, would end up being counter productive. It'd be too near for it too fool the eye.

You could always put mirrors on the ceiling. Gold-veined 1x1' mirror tiles. Yeah, THAT'd be classy.

(And yes, I am kidding!)

Curious, is this to code? I thought all ceilings had to be at least 8' tall. I'm out here in California, but I figured NY would be similar.

check out those pictures:
http://www.nelonen.fi/inno/jakso108/kuvagalleria/gifs/kuva_012.jpg
http://www.nelonen.fi/inno/jakso108/kuvagalleria/gifs/kuva_018.jpg
The hided indirect light on the upper part of the walls supposedly makes the room look higher.

I would suggest taking the ceiling fan out. I would remove anything from the ceiling that would remind people of its low height. As someone said earlier, use table lamps to light your rooms. As for a dining room light, consider a "taller" partner's desk type lamp, not a pendant. This could act as both a centerpiece and down-lighting for the table. Just remember to test out the height before buying as you want the lamp high enough so that conversation is not obstructed.

Any floorcovering you install should have a width-wise pattern (stripe, strip, etc). This will make the room appear wider than it actually is since a room 11x22 is likely to have a corridor feel. I would advise against using horizontal window treatments in the room such as horizontal blinds, honeycomb, or roman shades, again they will emphasize the low ceiling, instead use treatments that emphasize height and run at least from floor to window top.

Lower the floor.

Part of what's happening is that the room is so big that there's an optical illusion of the ceiling sagging in the middle.

The way you fix that is to bring the wall color (a LIGHT color) onto the ceiling however many inches you need to raise the ceiling -- at least 6" here, possibly a little more. Then paint the rest of the ceiling white. Make it a sunny white, not a gray white. Use cannister lights on the floor to uplight your ceiling -- the light will also give it a boost.

When you furnish, hang your art lower than you think you need to (cuddle it down to the furniture), with a strong "water line" at the top, so there's visible space between the art and the ceiling.

I may be repeating someone else since I haven't had time to look at all of the responses but... I believe New York State code for habitable spaces is 7'6" above ground or 7' for basements, but that's for new construction. Old buildings may allow less. Having grown up in a bedroom on the second floor of a bungalow with sloped ceilings topping out at 6'8", I am used to low ceilings. How low they feel depends a lot on the overall proportions of the room, not just on the height alone. 6'8" ceilings in a 12'x11' bedroom can feel cozy, while 7'3" ceilings in such a large room can feel oppressive. Perhaps creating the feeling of smaller "rooms" can help balance out the proportions and make the ceiling height seem more appropriate.

I had a "garden" apartment for a few years with 7' ceilings. When I first looked at the place, it was filled with a large sectional couch and other large-scale furniture. It made the apartment feel very closed-in.

When I moved in, I bought smaller-scale furniture that had clean lines and avoided furniture that looked overstuffed. I also added larger artwork and area rugs. On one wall I had floor to ceiling bookshelves. Although there was no getting away from the fact that it was obvious that the ceilings were low, the smaller furniture made a big difference because things looked properly scaled.

I agree that you should take the ceiling fan down. Having a spinning object on a low ceiling seems unpleasant.

The NYT has a slideshow with a photo showing a room with the wall paint on the ceiling a little.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/09/27/travel/28away.08.jpg

Wow, guys, thanks for all the comments and ideas! Some won't work for my space, budget, and know-how, but hopefully they'll help others. Some people have requested to see what becomes of the space-- if you're interested in following it, check out my Flickr photostream: username apartmentsasha.

I WISH I could refinish the floor, since there seems to be nice wood under the ancient carpet, but that's going to have to wait until the landlord agrees. I don't know how long I'm going to be in this apartment so I'm not going to invest in its flooring. Which is why the carpeting is still pink. I'd rather spend the $2k on the Danish Modern credenza of my dreams.

Windows: I'm definitely going to try the long curtain trick on the room's four windows. I also heard that if you hang them to the sides of the windows it makes them look bigger. I'm glad you guys said all this because I was about to go get some Roman blinds from Ikea. What can I use instead for privacy?

Ceilings: I have a semi-icky popcorn ceiling, so shiny won't work, right? The shiny wall trick does work, as I found out the hard way when I repainted the white semigloss walls with eggshell sandy taupe. Nicer color but the walls come forward.

Wende: Unfortunately, it's NOT an optical illusion. The ceiling is actually sagging in the middle. In fact, I haven't yet found a horizontal surface that is level in the whole place.

I like the area rug trick, and I am breaking the room up into halves-- dining room and living room. Photos of this coming soon since I just picked out a sofa yesterday (Room and Board Jasper).

I am certainly going to ditch the ceiling fan. The apartment has THREE. They are atrocious and don't help with the apartment's airflow problems.

Patrick: the room actually has an interesting vertical element already-- built in shelves between the windows. See flickr set. Your comment has made me decide to emphasize it with paint, rather than have it blend in.

Rey: That sounds like a neat trick, but on wall one I have that pipe for the sprinklers, wall two (not visible) would work well, but wall three has windows and only 2" of space between the ceiling and the top of the window moulding. I also think you touched on the real reason this space is so weird-- it's super long so it should look spacious, but the ceiling is so low that it doesn't.

Thanks again, guys! I'm excited for this room to come together.

I was searching for answers to the same questions... my house is a front/back split, leaving my living room in the rear of the house, with limited light and low low ceilings. I hate it and have tried several colors on the walls... all unsuccessfully... how is your project coming together? You mentioned we could follow it... how would I gain access???
Im planning to attack the space again... maybe a darker rug with warm but lighter walls (they are a burnt sienia color now)and paint the ceiling a satin white....

I finally put up new photos for the fall cure, one year after moving in. I think the suggestions that helped the most were to take down the ceiling fans and to keep the furniture low. No one notices the low ceilings now!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10198188@N05/